Anette Bringedal Houge

Anette Bringedal Houge is an Associate Professor at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo's Faculty of Law. Her research centers on gendered, political and collective violence, and institutional responses to such harms at local, national, and international levels. She is actively involved in the UiO:Life Science Convergence environment Evidently rape, where she leads the project From medical facts to legal evidence, examining how medical and forensic experts translate findings from sexual assaults for legal processing purposes.

Her research interests include institutional responses to crime and victimization, sexual and political violence, torture and rehabilitation, supranational criminology, international criminal justice, sociology of knowledge, and research ethics. Houge approaches these topics through interdisciplinary lenses, connecting criminology, sociology of law, gender studies, and medical humanities.

Houge's scholarly work reveals consistent engagement with the juridification of violence, particularly sexual violence, and how legal frameworks shape societal understanding of these phenomena. Her recent publications demonstrate growing focus on medical-legal interfaces in rape cases, ethical challenges in violence research, and rehabilitation systems for torture victims. She employs qualitative methods to explore how knowledge is constructed and translated across disciplinary boundaries within the criminal justice system.

• PhD in Criminology from the University of Oslo (2017)
• Former Head of Analysis at the Norwegian Red Cross
• Former postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Interdisciplinary Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo

Houge actively contributes to public discourse through commentaries in medical journals and newspapers. She has notably engaged in debates about medical certificates for elderly drivers, demonstrating her commitment to connecting academic research with policy discussions. Her work on research ethics has resulted in co-editing the textbook Etisk ubehag. En ærlig lærebok om kvalitativ forskning på sensitive temaer (2024), addressing ethical challenges in sensitive research topics.

She is affiliated with several research groups including Open Science: Democratizing knowledge production? (ReDemOS), Research Group on International Law, Society, Health and Power (SHEP), and the Thematic Group on Research Ethics and Global Criminology.